Frau im Mond
Georg Luif
Installation with two parallel projections (16 mm black and white, digital)
Austria 2012
The formal elements of a silent film from 1929 are applied to a video game film from 2012. The protagonist moves in sync with the original film in a film set built in 3D. Having once dominated cinema halls, movies have now entered our homes, TVs, laptops, and mobile phones. Video game films (machinima) are highly digital films – entire film sets can be downloaded as “maps” and interacted with on one’s own computer. I transform this information onto a 16 mm black and white roll of film – a code becomes a finished artistic object. A game engine enables me to approach the qualities of a monumental film from the late 1920s. At the same time, I try to abandon the traditional aesthetics of a video game (polygonal world, endless depth of field, pixelated textures) and change the first impression through the “haptic quality of the old”. The colorfulness and noise background of a game are removed, and only one accompanying soundtrack remains for both films. Due to the parallel projection (a computer program turns on the projector and plays the digital movie at the same time), the machinima film – a very young means of cinematic expression – is treated as equal to one of the last blockbuster productions of silent film. (Georg Luif)
Georg Luif, born 1991 in Vienna, Austria, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.
